This is a stucco relief fragment of a small Buddha appliqué figurine. Everything but the head and left part of halo and vesica is lost. The vesica is painted in grey with a red border; no colour is visible on the halo. The nose and mouth are worn down. Hair, eyes and eyebrows are painted in black. It was excavated from the temple cella of a shrine with dwelling quarters at the site of Farhad-beg-yailiki between Khotan and Keriya in Xinjiang, China. This Buddhist sanctuary was part of the former Kingdom of Khotan.

The Victoria and Albert Museum has more than 70 ceramic fragments and fragments of Buddhist sculptures, as well as around 600 ancient and medieval textiles recovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) during his second expedition (1906-8) into Chinese Central Asia, where he once again visited and excavated sites on the southern Silk Road, before moving eastwards to Dunhuang. At Dunhuang, he studied and excavated the Han-dynasty watchtowers to the north of the town, as well as the Mogao cave temples to the southeast, where he acquired material from the Library Cave. From there he moved on to the northern Silk Road, stopping briefly at Turfan sites but not carrying out any excavations. He made a perilous north-south crossing of the Taklamakan desert in order to hasten to Khotan where he excavated more ancient sites, before finishing off his expedition with surveying in the Kunlun Mountains.